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It wasn’t easy being Mark Towhey in a job that didn’t even last a year.

Appointed as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s chief of staff last August and fired on Thursday, Towhey was arguably the most important — and some would say the smartest — person on the mayor’s team.

Towhey was assigned to steer Ford in the right direction, find the right venues for Ford to appear at, identify media who could be sympathetic to him and plot strategy for the press secretary.

“I imagine that being chief of staff to Mayor Ford must be an almost impossible job, given the mayor’s obvious reluctance to focus on the job of mayor,” said Hugh Gunz, professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto.

Towhey’s job was made all the more demanding by the fact that Ford couldn’t seem to sidestep scandal and controversy.

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There are reports that Towhey was fired for urging the mayor to step down in the wake of the crack cocaine video scandal. If that is the case, Ford showed he wasn’t taking the advice from the person who is supposed to be his most trusted adviser.

How often did Towhey give advice that Ford ignored? Towhey wasn’t speaking publicly about that on the day he was fired.

“In the final analysis, you can advise, you can press, but if you’re not getting anywhere, you’re helpless,” Gunz said, likening the scandal to a “Greek tragedy.”

The chief of staff’s role is to “keep small problems from developing into big problems,” said Jeffrey Dvorkin, 66, a former political reporter in Washington and Ottawa and now director of the journalism program at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

“With Mayor Ford, that seemed to be an impossible task. A good chief of staff is someone who can be trusted by the leader even when that information is difficult.”

May 16, 2013, the Toronto Star reports that a cellphone video has captured Ford smoking from a crack cocaine pipe. The mayor called the allegations “ridiculous” but has not made a public statement to clear the air despite the urgings of fellow council members.

April 21, 2013: Saying “we need more females in politics,” Ford invites women to call him if they would like him to “explain how politics works” over coffee.

April 16, 2013: Ford walks face-first into a camera while attempting to evade reporters at City Hall. Grabbing his eye, he says, “Ah f--- man. Holy Christ. Holy — guys, have some respect. You just hit me in the face with a camera.” The incident is mocked by U.S. late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

March, 2013, the Star reports that Ford was asked to leave a gala event celebrating the Canadian armed forces because organizers were concerned he was impaired.

March 8, 2013: Former mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson accuses Ford of sexually assaulting her by grabbing her buttocks at a party held by a Jewish political organization. Ford denies the allegation.

November, 2012: A judge ousts Ford from office for violating conflict of interest law by casting a vote at council to excuse himself from repaying $3,150 to lobbyists and a company from which he had accepted donations for his foundation. He is granted a stay that allows him to keep his job pending his appeal, which he wins in January.

November, 2012: Paying TTC passengers are told to get off a bus in the rain so it can pick up Ford’s football team after an away game and drive them back to Don Bosco. After the police request the bus, Ford calls the TTC’s chief executive officer on his cellphone, then calls him again when the bus does not arrive immediately.

September, 2012: Ford leaves a meeting of his own executive committee more than five hours early to coach his football team in a pre-season scrimmage “jamboree.”

As chief of staff, Towhey ran an office of about 14 people, including press secretary George Christopolous.

A businessman before he came on board with Ford, Towhey, a Richard Ivey School of Business graduate, may have lacked the political savvy and experience to deal with someone as volatile as Ford.

Towhey’s firing was the second high-profile chief of staff to leave office amid scandal in the last week.

In coming to serve under Ford, Towhey was stepping into as demanding a role as exists in municipal politics. Dvorkin points out the role of chief of staff can be “complicated.”

“Their job is to make things as smooth as possible for the boss, keep the minor stuff away and at the same time make sure that the things that need attention are brought in front of him in a timely manner.”

Dvorkin said that the chief of staff job has become “media management in the extreme” in the 24-hour news cycle.

The effectiveness of a chief of staff depends on how receptive the leaders are to hearing the kind of news they may not want to hear.

Dvorkin, a former managing editor of CBC Radio and vice-president of news at National Public Radio in Washington, said that, from his perspective, Ford was clearly difficult to manage.

Ford’s strength is his ability to take complicated ideas and make them sound simple, he said.

“But political life is more complicated than that, especially in a place like Toronto,” Dvorkin said.

A chief of staff is usually hired because he is close to the mayor and thinks like the mayor. However, the mayor has to be willing to “hear bad news” from the chief of staff, Dvorkin said.

He suggested that both Ford and Harper live in a “strong echo chamber” where they believe their own press releases and enjoy “a certain level of invincibility.”

The best advice that Towhey could have given Ford is to face the media instead of ducking it, Dvorkin said.

“There are a lot of examples of politicians who get into trouble,” he said. “But the ones who get out of trouble are the ones who fess up and say, ‘I’m a sinner. You’re a sinner. You can understand this. Forgive me.’ And they usually are forgiven.”

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